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Mod 10 and RNG Flaws (Wi Flag Issues)
matthiasthehun76
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,184 Arc User
Hi fellow Gamers, Dear Devs and Mods!
@asterdahl , @strumslinger
@beckylunatic please gives us your support, you are the Grand Lady of this forum
Hi all, yesterday i was logging off with a deja vu feeling again. I was thinking about the not so beloved Mod 3 and i mean not the maps, but our all time fav the RNG, which saw a revival- sadly- in Mod 10 with the new boot hunt in HEs.
I would like to take the x-th opportunity to make Devs aware, that there are a few or maybe more, who have serious RNG issues and i am not talking about the usual bad luck, but a streak or a pattern, which shows up on all the toons of an account. We might call it Wi Flag or whatever, actually the name doesn't matter, what matters some of us are 100% sure we will never see the boots, as we never see other in-game items, which are RNG related.
I am willing and would gladly help as a guild officer and as an individual to show Devs how the effected accounts and players suffer, we never or very very rarely get to see a COA ward (i personally saw my first one after playing this game for over 2 years ouch ouch and i have 11 toons), we never or maybe just a few times see even a +3/+4 ring drop from skirmishes, when we open celestial coffers we get the same junk on each toon (yes exactly the same one over and over), etc.
Now coming back to Mod 10 boot hunt, we can do gazilion HEs, nothing, nada and yes we have eyes, we read zone chat or the forums (although many don't contribute) and see, that others are kind of getting our luck. Don't get me wrong, i am not jelly or anything, but is it normal, that some get so many boots, that they could open a shoe shop, while others have zero and probably will have zero drops in the future too?!
Summa summarum, there is no doubt in my mind, the game has serious Wi Flag issues and since it was never looked at, i keep on losing friends, guildies and personally i am feeling terrible many times too.
Thank you for your time!
@asterdahl , @strumslinger
@beckylunatic please gives us your support, you are the Grand Lady of this forum
Hi all, yesterday i was logging off with a deja vu feeling again. I was thinking about the not so beloved Mod 3 and i mean not the maps, but our all time fav the RNG, which saw a revival- sadly- in Mod 10 with the new boot hunt in HEs.
I would like to take the x-th opportunity to make Devs aware, that there are a few or maybe more, who have serious RNG issues and i am not talking about the usual bad luck, but a streak or a pattern, which shows up on all the toons of an account. We might call it Wi Flag or whatever, actually the name doesn't matter, what matters some of us are 100% sure we will never see the boots, as we never see other in-game items, which are RNG related.
I am willing and would gladly help as a guild officer and as an individual to show Devs how the effected accounts and players suffer, we never or very very rarely get to see a COA ward (i personally saw my first one after playing this game for over 2 years ouch ouch and i have 11 toons), we never or maybe just a few times see even a +3/+4 ring drop from skirmishes, when we open celestial coffers we get the same junk on each toon (yes exactly the same one over and over), etc.
Now coming back to Mod 10 boot hunt, we can do gazilion HEs, nothing, nada and yes we have eyes, we read zone chat or the forums (although many don't contribute) and see, that others are kind of getting our luck. Don't get me wrong, i am not jelly or anything, but is it normal, that some get so many boots, that they could open a shoe shop, while others have zero and probably will have zero drops in the future too?!
Summa summarum, there is no doubt in my mind, the game has serious Wi Flag issues and since it was never looked at, i keep on losing friends, guildies and personally i am feeling terrible many times too.
Thank you for your time!
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
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Comments
Sadly, the RNG is just the RNG I think... though it does suck when you go through 15 p.wards on a 90% chance to upgrade... but then, it's really nice when you nail a 20% chance on the first attempt, 3 times in a row... all of which happened to me this weekend! I also burned through 10 p.wards on a 50% chance to upgrade... so sometimes the RNG is nice, other times it can be brutal!
Don't get me wrong Samaka, i don't want to argue with you, but i wish it was just as you say, but not this time around.
Let me name a few examples just out of my humble in-game life, you could see how many epic rings for example my tactician GF got so far, answer zero, boy i am lucky if i see a +2 lol and it's nearly the same on the other toons as well. (I have to admit there was a week, when i could get a few epic ones, but after it, nothing.) Many toons don't have +1 or +2s either. My collection page is so empty i could give it to a kid to draw something into it. lol
Another example, guess how many wards i used to a simple upgrade, 92! Now that's just 1 item on 1 toon!
Third example, guess what if i go into Throne or skirmish, yes every time (even on full gold runs) a +1 and if i am lucky a +2 ring and 90% the same, just Cowardice +1 ring, in chest guess what Cowardice +1 again lol, so a pattern obviously.
Forthly, guess what i find in CN? Nothing, if i am lucky, the chest opens, cause yes it is stuck many times. I was told by a game staff member that yes it is a "bug".
Did it help me i know it's a "bug"? Nope, it can only help if it's fixed!
Cool it's a bug, forget Wi Flag, actually we could name it whatever we want, outcome is same.
These things i have described are the examples of mine, i could name more as a long time player and guild leader/officer, but i am not allowed to share others personal data here openly.
Now these are just bits. I don't want to whine, but only those feel this pain, who are suffering it and sadly Mod 10 boot hunt is just the same, deja vu.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
As for the RNG, well when my partner and I played WoW we had terrible luck with the RNG for item drops... I mean terribad luck. I think in our entire time playing the game we managed to get only a small handful of named purple drops. However, when I played my pally one of the mechanics was an RNG chance at some of your powers becoming active before they normally would... and for me, they popped all the time. It was crazy, those abilities were practically perma-available to me, which made PvP crazy on that character as I constantly had those skills at my fingertips all the time.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the RNG in Neverwinter isn't broken... however, our brains love to try to see patterns in things, and we especially have a problem with randomness. Only Cryptic really has the ability to see the "big picture" with the RNG, in terms of the distribution of numbers being generated. Sadly, it is very possible to wind up getting the short end of the stick, as it were, frequently. Just as there are some people who are 'very lucky' with the RNG.
Unfortunately, trying to determine if the RNG is fair, from our perspective, is like trying to count all the trees in the forest, while you are standing in the middle of it!
I think my luck in NWO is probably going to be good since I have only been playing three months and managed to get a legendary mount to drop at the summer festival... however, when upgrading items the RNG seems to hate me with a passion! My luck with lockboxes though doesn't seem to be anything spectacular as yet, but I've probably only opened just under 100 boxes so far... I really should have been keeping track of my lockbox drops!
Due to the nature of the RNG is really is hard, from the players perspective, to determine if there really is something wrong with the RNG or not. I wish it was easier to determine, but no matter the game played the forums always have threads of this nature pop up... people who swear they are "Wi Flagged", both the good and bad version.
Maybe some day an MMO will come along with a true random-number generator... apparently strides are being made towards that goal that don't involve a room full of lava lamps!
As i wrote above i have "official" confirmation, that the chest opening bug affects some chars more than others.
Secondly i must add- just as a side note-, i have worked as a young law practitioner in a huge law company which made the promotions for a very well known sci-fi movie here in Mid-Europe and well what shall i say, i saw and learned a lot, which made me quit my job there and now i am working on a totally different field, contrary to what i have learned. How do they say in the States, "There's no business, like show business", i think that covers it well enough.
I am trying to open these threads only cause things are faulty here, no doubt about it, one can try to mask things and act as the bad housewife, who pushes all the dirt under the carpet, but one day the guests will fall over it (Hungarian phrase btw).
As i said i was guild leader and now i am currently officer in another guild, so yes i could write a book about my own and other's luck or misfortune and yes there are some patterns, which i would happily share with Devs behind closed doors of course.
Truth to be told, i really don't care if the repair is done behind the curtains, so there is no image loss on behalf of the company, only thing really i would love to see is some improvement and that's what i am hoping for now, again...
Have a nice day!
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
The OP posts these posts repeatedly, albeit less so recently (it was very frequent long time ago) and yet never with any concrete numbers, how many runs ? how many boxes opened ?
People checked the RNG in a methodical manner, with recorded results, and so far it is all the same, annoyingly frustrating, but yet annoying and frustrating equally to all of us.
I've run hundreds of edemo, I don't have a single +5 ring, I know a person that got one on the second run (and the power one), so it means that the devs flagged me?
Should I started post too?
I more than agree that the RNG as design is bad (understatement), and posts about an assured system, a cap if RNG fails should exist, in a way like twisted weapons can be bought if they do not drop after enough runs.
But this is not a post about RNG, this is a post about something else. How many runs ? What upgrade ?
Lets see all the results of all your upgrades, people remember the 92 wards, but tend to forget the < 10 wards for that 3% chance. 1. Gold result do not affect the RNG on the reward (unfortunately).
2. You got 2 of the same rings back to back and that make it a pattern ? Seriously.. You ralize that with the loot table favors lower value items you have higher chance of getting the same +1 in two runs than +5 and probably over +4 and even +3. This was and is the reason people complained about the rings gated behind RNG and no way to get them or combine / trade the rings. It's a design decision that we all complained about, and nothing unique to a player, a bug, or a flag or whatever. It's a well known bug with a well known and extremely easy work around, you wait until no one interacts and then wiggle the cursor until the red "can't claim" text turns into green one, then press "f".
You have something else, record it, lets see, maybe someone can actually help you.
Here a good and free program:
OBS Studio
Is it both chests in CN ? You didn't share a single number. With all these posts and the same request, I would have thought you will one and for all record how many times you run things, open stuff etc, and at least post that. But you never do, not a single time any concrete numbers were given.
Everyone who saved the invoke boxes got to the same 3% c-wards for large sample size. How many you opened ? And no openeing 30 boxes doesn't mean you get a ward. This is not how expected value works.
I want to know how is that it's affects only your guild and friends ? It is some sort of contagious bug ?
As a guild officer / leader of a guild that I believe runs content much much frequently than you (at least when there is content to run) I can tell you about a guildie with what must be close to a thousand or in the high hundreds PoM runs and yet no +5 crit ring.
Is it a bug ?! It's just the amazingly bad gating design that we all complain about, and nothing special to him or you.
For example:
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Pseudo-random_distribution
Listen please, i am not posting anything concrete here, cause as i wrote above, i would first share this with the Devs and find a suitable solution for all, both gamers and the company alike.
Secondly, once a lawyer, a bit always, i have bullet proof data, but won't share it here, cause it might disturb some people, but trust me they exist.
Thirdly, why do i have written then here? Cause i try since long time to get in contact with a game staff member, who besides acknowledging some faults and saying only "bug" will eventually do something, that can help to cure the broken RNG settings.
Look at my OP, i have highlighted @asterdahl and @strumslinger .
Then why am i writing here? Cause there is no more PM option as it was back on old forums, we have to ask certain people to contact us to be able to respond back and since i have done this, but none of the above mentioned gentleman has contacted me, i have to resort to publicly make aware of the problem.
Hope this helps a bit to understand my motivations.
Thank you again!
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
I doubt any devs/mods will come on here and discuss ward or lockbox RNG. But it seems ward RNG is ok. Lockbox? Who knows.
Now this may seem to defy logic and RNG, BUT it does give a higher success rate for whatever reason.
Same applies to HE's. Do 2-3. STOP. Do something else for a bit. Go back to HE's. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want.
RNGesus hates impatience. Be more zen, and you will use less Zen.
"Why is it dragons only use ketchup? I'd like a little wasabi please. Us silvers like a variety of condiments."
"Don't call them foolish mortals. One, they don't learn from it. Two, It just ticks them off." - An Ancient Red Dragon
Now this may seem to defy logic and RNG, BUT it does give a higher success rate for whatever reason.
Same applies to HE's. Do 2-3. STOP. Do something else for a bit. Go back to HE's. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want.
RNGesus hates impatience. Be more zen, and you will use less Zen." Dragoness10
+1 to this method.
RNG is RNG is RNG--It can be frustrating when you 'break the bank' for a 50% chance or exhilarating when you use 1 for a 5% chance. But I can tell you one thing about using this method--It is far less stressful than sitting there and watching your pres wards disappear. Whether it affects the outcome--who knows. But it can mitigate the emotional crush of losing all those pres wards in 30 seconds of button mashing. Spread out the damage.
I'm sorry--I lost the quotes for @dragoness10
Does this make sense? Not really but I have been doing that many many times.
I am 100% certain there are coding flaws in their use of RNG in this game. The Wi Flag issue shows just how sure the developers can be that it's RNG but they just didn't code it properly and it requires someone taking a very close look and examining the flawed accounts to get to the bottom of it.
It's this kind of attitude that keeps these bugs from getting fixed. Do some research on the Wi Flag which took them YEARS to finally isolate, debug and fix.
No it doesn't do any good at all to just do random testing and say the RNG distribution looks good (which was also why the Wi Flag went on for so long). You need to look at the affected accounts/characters to get to the bottom of it.
Probability is always in the range [0,1] When they calculated their ranges they created [0,n-1] range and didn't adjust for it. The RNG generator worked fine there. Claiming an item from a loot table is much much simpler and much less prone for mistakes.
Read carefully what I wrote, I do not claim bugs do not exists, I say that saying repeatedly 'I and all I know have a problem, but I wont disclose them' is not a proof of one, so is saying 'trust me'. Neither will help find one, solve it, confirm it or help in any way.
I hope you agree that getting crapton of +1 rings over +3, +4 and +5 is actually intended. I do not want to bring up OP earlier posts, as this one way more reasonable than those.
If someone will post that he got 10 of the same rings in back to back runs in CN, I will say, we have a bug here. And there was such bug in July 2014, and I was the first to report it.
But before posting we ran several people several times to verify.
The strange thing about the official link to the Wi Flag is that I am sure that wasn't the only fix... I thought when Todd was hired to go work at Turbine he found an additional flaw in the networking code that also caused Wi Flag like behavior. I can't find anything online, so I am thinking he may have discussed that via IRC... before he got a timeout for discussing things over IRC he apparently wasn't allowed to be discussing!
However, the issue from AC is not quite the same issue here in Neverwinter. This issue is the same as I've seen people make in every MMO I've played... the RNG is bad and they never get good drops. Usually, the same people complain without providing any hard data, though in this case apparently hard data does exist, the OP just won't share it... which sort of defeats the purpose of making a public thread about the subject!
As we have no idea what the architecture is behind the RNG in Neverwinter all we can do is speculate. I suppose it may be possible they are using some information from our individual accounts to seed the RNG specifically for our rolls, but that seems more unlikely than they just use a global RNG for everyone... but who knows? Only the devs, and I doubt they will be telling us any time soon.
Of course, people will have their superstitions about how to use the RNG, if you do a Google search you can find any number of sites where people have foolproof methods to "trick" the RNG. I suppose, potentially, one of those might be exploiting a bug in the system, but most of them seem to be at the level of superstition to me.
If you do a Google search for TRNG there are a number of true-RNG generators out there, I wonder why MMORPGs don't use them more often? Then they could say we use a True RNG, so nope, no problems here!
Again the point isn't that they made the "same" mistake here, just that if you start with an algorithm that turns out to be mathematically incorrect (but you assume and swear it is) you can code it 100% correct and get bad results.
Considering the bugs they had with TT, Frostburn enchants and even with the Feytouched enchant, it is not too much of a stretch to think some of their algorithms aren't mathematically sound. Some are just easier for players to test and prove than others.
Furthermore how do we know their distribution of results is correct? Do you take it over the entire server or look at an individual session? If you looked at it over the server the Wi Flag issue would look like a non issue that you can chalk up to standard RNG fluctuations.
All I can say is that no I don't have "concrete" proof, but I've seen enough crazy stuff (like failing 30+ times in a row on a 90% success rate), to suspect something is wrong.
Perhaps it's a bug or perhaps some folks are just truly that unlucky, but either way they should introduce a safety net for rolls so that that the deviation from the norm shouldn't be that far off (i.e. if the drop rate for boots is say 5%) you should get a pair of boots if you run 100 heroics and haven't gotten them by then.
To all, who can't grasp the situation, you may call me a dinosaur or an old school idiot or whatever you wish, BUT let me tell you through my own work, how we do it here in old Europe at one of the oldest and biggest industrial complexes.
We make all kinds of products from the average Joe's kitchen accessory to military and government vehicles. My job is kind of similar as Andy's job, with the small exception, that we are in contact with the entire globe and our products are in nearly every household.
Now if one of my dear customers lets say from Hotel Adlon would call us- even in the middle of the night-, that he feels his Maybach makes a strange noise, we would send the technicians on the spot to him, no questions asked, no additional comments added about our customer or his persona. Would only 1 employee dare to say an ill word, we would lose huge amounts and guess what would be the price the employee would have to pay. Also our technicians go through a constant training both in customer relations and in know-how. Guess how long would Adlon tolerate a "bug" in there luxury cars or how long would a soldier tolerate, that his tank is not maneuverable?! BUT you know, if average Joe calls our CS we do a prompt investigation too and trust me, my bosses allow no delay, no ill talking of the said customer, not even then, when it turns out it was a false alarm, after all "Customer is KING" (old German phrase).
My point is with this small example, what i would like to see from this beautiful game, with a sadly very mediocre Customer Service, is fast reaction to customer needs with friendly and well educated manners.
I have several times written to them, sometimes sent them screenshots, sometimes offered to send even more, nobody cares, not a word. Most of the time i get an automated response or nothing and basta it's done.
Now see where i would like to go with this story, CS/Mods/Devs need to act and make thorough investigations on reported accounts. Sure the customer can be wrong, we are all humans, we make mistakes, but at least they should look at our or in this case my complain, not shuffle everything under the carpet saying it's RNG or a "bug" and do nothing, but then again maybe i am the dinosaur.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
I don't claim to be an expert on RNG or anything, but its awfully weird that you can hit it first try 4-5 times, then fail to hit a 75% chance multiple times....then back to hitting every single one.
The RNG here seems "sticky" for lack of a better term. "I slept with a magma brute" must open thousands of lockboxes, and I have seen that guy win several legendaries in a row within a minute (the most was 3 I think).
This is why you have all sorts of ideas how to get a better drop: Stack Pwards separately and use a different stack each attempt. Use a empty instance. Waiting 30 seconds between attempts. Close the refine window....
From what I know, it doesn't seem THAT hard to either create a sufficiently random RNG process, or alternatively, give each account a flag/counter of some sort that increases their quality of drops from each source each time they get a HAMSTER one. I think they are WAY overboard on making sure people can't game the system...
There is a reason they use the word "chance" alot, and use a lot of vague terms. Doing this releases you of all accountability, cause they never told you what was supposed to happen.